Tea - The Drink of Ceremony and Custom
Investigating Beverages Derived from Angiosperm Plants
Sep 3, 2009
The need for liquids is even more pressing in humans than the need for food. From earliest times, we have used plants and their products to produce beverages that refresh and stimulate more than water alone. The most familiar examples of such beverages are coffee, tea, and cocoa (chocolate).
Next to water, tea is the world’s most popular beverage. Every day an estimated 800 million cups or glasses of tea are consumed around the world.
Tea Comes to Europe and then North America
Scattered reports of this Chinese drink first reached Europe in the mid-fifteenth century, but tea did not actually arrive in Western Europe until 1610 when Dutch traders brought it to Holland. It didn’t reach England, the country most associated with tea as ceremony, until the 1650s.
Tea made its appearance in North America about 1650, brought to New Amsterdam by the Dutch. Due to the high cost ($30-$50 per pound of dried leaves), the beverage was reserved at first only for the well-to-do. However, by the mid-1700s, the colonists were all avid consumers.
There were two sources for these imports. On one hand, you could deal with the East India Company, which was the official import company of the crown or you could deal (as most colonists did) with smugglers which would sell the product at lower and duty-free prices.
The East India Company complained mightily to Parliament about their surpluses and loss of revenue. Parliament responded with the Tea Act of 1773, allowing the East India Company to sell their tea directly to the colonies without paying any of the taxes imposed on the colonial merchants who bought the tea.
The Tea Act flamed already deep passion in the colonies regarding this whole business and was viewed as yet another case by the crown of taxation without representation. The famous (or infamous) response was the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. That night colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded British ships and dumped their cargo of tea into Boston Harbor.
One lasting outcome of the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War was to make the United States a nation of coffee drinkers. However, iced tea is without a doubt the national summertime drink of Americans. This is due to the ingenuity of Englishman Richard Blechyden. At the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, Blechyden was trying to introduce people to teas from the Far East but sweltering hot weather dampened people’s desire for anything hot. In a stoke of genius, he experimented by pouring the hot tea into glasses filled with ice; it was (as still is) a big hit.
The Nature of the Tea Plant
Tea is made from the dried tip leaves of a small tree or shrub native to the area adjoining Tibet, India, China, and Burma. The tea plant (Camellia sinensis) flourishes in tropical or subtropical climates where there is abundant rainfall and no danger of frost. Nevertheless, some varieties can tolerate marine climates and are cultivated as far north as Seattle in the United States.
Each tea plant is pruned to encourage shrubby growth with a flat top to facilitate hand plucking of the leaves. For best quality teas, only the terminal bud and top two leaves of each branch are harvested.
Processing Leaves into Tea
Harvested tea leaves are processed in one of three different ways to yield black tea. green tea, or oolong tea.
Black tea begins with withering. The freshly picked leaves are placed on racks where hot, dry air is passed over them for 12-24 hours. During this time the leaves lose much of their water content. After withering, the leaves are rolled; rolling breaks up the cells, releasing enzymes that start the next step, fermentation.
The leaves are spread out in cool, humid fermentation rooms for several hours. Fermentation brings about chemical changes that turn the leaf a copper color. The last stage is the firing or drying of the leaves which turns them black.
Green teas are not fermented. The leaves are not withered; after plucking, the leaves are steamed, rolled, and dried. The dried leaves remain green.
Oolong teas are semi-fermented; they are lightly withered to permit a partial fermentation, resulting in leaves that are a greenish-brown color.
After drying, the leaves are sorted into sizes or grades. The smallest tip leaves are called orange pekoe; the larger leaves are pekoe and souchong. Broken leaf pieces are sieved out and used predominantly in tea bags.
Whether enjoyed hot or cold, the soothing slightly bitter beverage known as tea has been and continues to be a worldwide favorite.
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